Garden has begun!

Hello, everyone and welcome to another Foodie Friday!

I wanted to report that our garden has begun! So far we have 4 tomato plants and 3 strawberry plants in these green pots. We have plans on more planting in the ground, as opposed to pots.

This is a before picture: Don't mind the weeds...We barely began to break up the flower boxes in the back yard. However, we did get pretty excited when we remembered that we had the use of a rototiller! Thumbs up to that one!

I will be posting pics and updates as the plants grow and let you know what happens, even if it's unfortunate. Life is real and I don't want to hide the troubles of gardening. It's not perfect and it's hard. But in the end you get to reap the sweet benefits of having a garden, no matter how small.

We're going to try doing the Native American way of planting by using compatible planting. We will be planting corn; green beans/wax beans; and either squash, cucumbers or cantaloupe all in one hole. This will let the three layers of plants grow together, helping one another out. The corn will be a stake for the beans to grab hold of when they need held up. The squash, cucumbers or cantaloupe will add a ground cover to keep out weeds.

We have never used this method before, but are very excited to try it! All through growing up my family lived in the country and we had a garden that stretched beyond the length of our large house and was almost half as deep. We would share it with a local Amish family in the neighborhood and trust me when I say, their plants were always better and less weed-filled than ours was. I grew up pulling a lot of weeds in that garden, which is why my sister and I are eager to try out this method and see what we can do with it. We also don't have much space to work with but we have big dreams of what we want to grow. What better way to get more for your space?

This is the street that I grew up on and every time I see this picture I feel so at home.

We're unsure of how much the garden will produce and we may decide not to grow certain things next year. But it's going to be fun and we're going to try very hard at it. We also share a yard with the wild animals of the town, who doesn't around here? I'm just hoping they don't eat all of our produce before we get to it.

Why grow your own garden? Why not just buy your produce from the grocery store or the farmer's market? If that's how you want to get your produce, that's fine. The only thing about growing your own garden is that you can get organic fruits and veggies for only the money it cost to buy the seeds. Also, you get to plant whatever you want and maybe whatever that is is also pretty expensive in the grocery store? Say you want to buy a bunch of tomatoes for making and canning sauce, that would get pretty expensive from the grocery store prices. But, you could grow your own organic tomatoes and can that sauce for little money. Sure you would have to wait for them to be ripe, but why not?

Another reason for gardening is the dirt. Have you ever heard your grandmother or other family member say they just can't wait to get their hands in the dirt? Well, if you have, you may also feel the same way. I personally love the smell of freshly broken dirt and even love the smell after it rains because it smells like wet dirt. It's a good feeling to have your hands in something, creating life in it and learning about what you can do to raise a better plant. I'm the same way when it comes to flowers. Don't get me wrong, I still end up with weeds, but I'm hoping this year I can do better in that department.

I come from a long line of people with their hands in the dirt (on both sides of my family) and that's where I long to stay. So, I'll keep you posted on the ups and downs of our vegetable garden and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Three Sisters method of planting explained: (Funny, cause I'm one of three sisters.)

Happy gardening!